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I'll be the one to bring up the taboo: It's totally possible that intelligent people have well paying careers and give birth to intelligence advantaged childre

I'll be the one to bring up the taboo: It's totally possible that intelligent people have well paying careers and give birth to intelligence advantaged children. Mother nature loves bestowing fortune to the fortunate. There is the pervasive "blank slate" approach to cognition, when there is plenty of evidence that your brain is not in fact a blank slate at birth. I mean people just passively accept that some people are just born physically stronger, or with a more athletic build. Especially if their parents are athletes, or it runs in the family. But bring up intelligence along with genetic factors and everyone recoils and tenses up. It seems so plainly true, there is plenty of evidence to back it, yet its article after article, discussion after discussion of "Kids who read books end up being more successful" and never "Naturally smart kids enjoy reading books".

ajuc 3y ago
Nobody believes 100% blank state. The debate is about the percentage. Also intelligence (as measured by IQ) is not linearly correlated with success. After a certain point the higher IQ you have the less likely you are to be successful.
- david-gpu 3y ago
  > After a certain point the higher IQ you have the less likely you are to be successful Being much smarter than the people around you must feel very isolating. The expectations placed on you since you are a child can't be easy to deal with either. Thankfully I'm too stupid to have any of those problems.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Kids who grow up in a household with a mother and father who read are more successful.
dakial1 3y ago
It seems that the article/study does not disagree with your point: > Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level.
sho_hn 3y ago
The difference in attention being paid seems rather sensible to me. It's more useful information, because it's actionable. You can't alter the genetic make-up of your children post-facto, but you can nurture them.
- giantg2 3y ago
  Well, you can now. Just not legally or perhaps not even ethically.
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    The CRISPR-style editing you have to do very early after conception, though. I meant bigger version of "post facto" :-)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gretch 3y ago
I think the problem is that people tend to see the genetic factor as the predominant factor, and conclude that some kids aren’t worth the effort. The balance between nature and nurture is tbd, but what we’ve seen is that humans have a lot of plasticity and the major factor is your environment. Your athletics analogy is apt I think. Here’s the part that’s missing - who’s likely to be better at basketball? A gifted child with no training or an average kid who has spent years drilling and studying basketball. Through this we can see that even average people can do really well at something if we give them a proper upbringing, something that many kids are denied today. (For completeness, of course there are kids who are gifted and receive training. Those are gonna be fine and we probably don’t have to worry about them, they already excel)
dotancohen 3y ago
I'm going to risk quite a lot of fake internet points to add to your point. Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with culture, and you'll be demonized. Yet study after study of children who were not raised by their natural parents suggest a very strong link between parents' and childrens' behaviour - even after accounting for externalities such as the area where they live or intake of e.g. lead. I would be very, very surprised if the children of intelligent people - who typically enjoy reading from what I observe - didn't themselves enjoy reading.
- esalman 3y ago
  How is being raised by natural parents related to culture? Is there a particular culture which promotes or disapproves of this?
  - ip26 3y ago
    The usual direction this goes is, some cultures place higher or lower relative value on parenting your kids, and some cultures are in practice rife with absent parents as a byproduct of what they value. edit: on rereading, I think the original comment about “natural parents” was trying to make a point about nature vs nurture, not about parenting.
    - rexpop 3y ago
      Some "cultures" are just organs of a larger cultural superstructure, and they don't make sense to discuss in isolation.
  - AnnikaL 3y ago
    I think they meant that studying children "not raised by their natural [i.e. genetically related] parents" is a way to tell that any differences are a result of parenting or culture rather than some other factor, like genetics or location.
- smogcutter 3y ago
  Anyone who works with or spends time with children will tell you that all kinds of behaviors, including violence, are learned from adults and peers. Once someone starts talking about “culture” though they're usually veering toward some really vicious stereotypes and wink-nudge fig leafs that help people hold & promote racist attitudes without thinking of themselves as racist.
aidenn0 3y ago
> But bring up intelligence along with genetic factors and everyone recoils and tenses up. I don't think this is true; general intelligence is considered to be highly heritable (40-80% according to Wikipedia). If you start suggesting that g is correlated to race then you'll get a lot of push-back, but as far as heritability not really. To the degree that intelligence is affected by the environment, we should encourage things that help. Not starving kids and preventing them from ingesting lead both probably have a higher effect than reading, but I would not be surprised if reading doesn't at least cause some development to occur earlier (whether or not there are measurable effects that last into adulthood).
ip26 3y ago
It’s dangerous ground, so people are leery of it. For example, if different races have at a population higher or lower average IQ, and IQ is heritable, that starts to look uncomfortably like the old arguments from a few hundred years ago justifying racism.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
People are worried about the outcomes of such thinking, not so much the accuracy of it. Especially since it's only one step removed from talking about cultural/racial association.
o0banky0o 3y ago
The point is not to compare people to each other, comparing people is purely secondary to the task, the point is to enable people as best they can be enabled. Even if you are low iq, you should still learn to read if you can.
AnnikaL 3y ago
The article does try to control for this via the education levels of the parents: > Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level. That’s because the effect didn’t depend on how many years of education the children’s parents had had – which is our best measure for very young children’s intelligence (IQ is partially heritable).

ajuc 3y ago

Nobody believes 100% blank state. The debate is about the percentage. Also intelligence (as measured by IQ) is not linearly correlated with success. After a certain point the higher IQ you have the less likely you are to be successful.

david-gpu 3y ago
> After a certain point the higher IQ you have the less likely you are to be successful Being much smarter than the people around you must feel very isolating. The expectations placed on you since you are a child can't be easy to deal with either. Thankfully I'm too stupid to have any of those problems.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Kids who grow up in a household with a mother and father who read are more successful.

dakial1 3y ago

It seems that the article/study does not disagree with your point: > Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level.

sho_hn 3y ago

The difference in attention being paid seems rather sensible to me. It's more useful information, because it's actionable. You can't alter the genetic make-up of your children post-facto, but you can nurture them.

giantg2 3y ago
Well, you can now. Just not legally or perhaps not even ethically.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  The CRISPR-style editing you have to do very early after conception, though. I meant bigger version of "post facto" :-)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gretch 3y ago

I think the problem is that people tend to see the genetic factor as the predominant factor, and conclude that some kids aren’t worth the effort. The balance between nature and nurture is tbd, but what we’ve seen is that humans have a lot of plasticity and the major factor is your environment. Your athletics analogy is apt I think. Here’s the part that’s missing - who’s likely to be better at basketball? A gifted child with no training or an average kid who has spent years drilling and studying basketball. Through this we can see that even average people can do really well at something if we give them a proper upbringing, something that many kids are denied today. (For completeness, of course there are kids who are gifted and receive training. Those are gonna be fine and we probably don’t have to worry about them, they already excel)

dotancohen 3y ago

I'm going to risk quite a lot of fake internet points to add to your point. Bring up violent tendencies or anything to do with culture, and you'll be demonized. Yet study after study of children who were not raised by their natural parents suggest a very strong link between parents' and childrens' behaviour - even after accounting for externalities such as the area where they live or intake of e.g. lead. I would be very, very surprised if the children of intelligent people - who typically enjoy reading from what I observe - didn't themselves enjoy reading.

esalman 3y ago
How is being raised by natural parents related to culture? Is there a particular culture which promotes or disapproves of this?
- ip26 3y ago
  The usual direction this goes is, some cultures place higher or lower relative value on parenting your kids, and some cultures are in practice rife with absent parents as a byproduct of what they value. edit: on rereading, I think the original comment about “natural parents” was trying to make a point about nature vs nurture, not about parenting.
  - rexpop 3y ago
    Some "cultures" are just organs of a larger cultural superstructure, and they don't make sense to discuss in isolation.
- AnnikaL 3y ago
  I think they meant that studying children "not raised by their natural [i.e. genetically related] parents" is a way to tell that any differences are a result of parenting or culture rather than some other factor, like genetics or location.
smogcutter 3y ago
Anyone who works with or spends time with children will tell you that all kinds of behaviors, including violence, are learned from adults and peers. Once someone starts talking about “culture” though they're usually veering toward some really vicious stereotypes and wink-nudge fig leafs that help people hold & promote racist attitudes without thinking of themselves as racist.

aidenn0 3y ago

> But bring up intelligence along with genetic factors and everyone recoils and tenses up. I don't think this is true; general intelligence is considered to be highly heritable (40-80% according to Wikipedia). If you start suggesting that g is correlated to race then you'll get a lot of push-back, but as far as heritability not really. To the degree that intelligence is affected by the environment, we should encourage things that help. Not starving kids and preventing them from ingesting lead both probably have a higher effect than reading, but I would not be surprised if reading doesn't at least cause some development to occur earlier (whether or not there are measurable effects that last into adulthood).

ip26 3y ago

It’s dangerous ground, so people are leery of it. For example, if different races have at a population higher or lower average IQ, and IQ is heritable, that starts to look uncomfortably like the old arguments from a few hundred years ago justifying racism.

xboxnolifes 3y ago

People are worried about the outcomes of such thinking, not so much the accuracy of it. Especially since it's only one step removed from talking about cultural/racial association.

o0banky0o 3y ago

The point is not to compare people to each other, comparing people is purely secondary to the task, the point is to enable people as best they can be enabled. Even if you are low iq, you should still learn to read if you can.

AnnikaL 3y ago

The article does try to control for this via the education levels of the parents: > Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level. That’s because the effect didn’t depend on how many years of education the children’s parents had had – which is our best measure for very young children’s intelligence (IQ is partially heritable).